There are, of course, other characters (even other important characters, actually), but I won’t be going into them here because I really just want to talk about the way the fandom has managed to create an entire code to describe in the headings the fiction that’s written for Gundam Wing.

For example, you’ll likely see something like this at the top of any piece of GW fiction you might read.

1×2, 3+C, 13x5x6

And yes, that actually means stuff. Let me translate… well, it’s more complicated than it at first seems, even if you can recognize the pairings.

First pairing: 1×2. That is, Heero Yuy and Duo Maxwell have a romantic/sexual relationship.
Second pairing: 3+C. Trowa Barton and Catherine Bloom have a close friendship.
Third pairing: 13x5x6. Trieze Khushrenada, Chang Wufei, and Zechs Marquise all have a romantic/sexual relationship.

Here’s the thing, though. If it were just that, which is the more obvious part, then it wouldn’t matter in what order the numbers were written. Except, as you may have noticed, the order matters. When is comes to male/male pairings, the character who’s represented by the first number (for example, Trowa—pilot 03—in “3×4”) is the dominant personality in the relationship. He’s the “giving” partner, if you know what I mean, and the person represented by the second number (Quatre, pilot 04, in this case) is the “receiving” partner. In terms of this anime, I don’t really read het, but the pairings that I’ve seen that are het always assume that the woman is “receiving” partner… which, I guess, is technically true.

But wait, it gets more complicated. If there are three partners (ie: 13x5x6, as above), the most dominant partner is first (Treize, 13) and the second most dominant partner is last (Zechs, 06). The most submissive partner is in the middle (Wufei, 05). If there are more than three participants, however, all bets are off. (So if someone wrote “1x2x3x4x5” then it is what it looks like—an orgy—and there’s not really any sense of it to be made.)

But wait, there’s still more. What if you see something like “1x2x1”? If you go by the threesome thing, you might be really confused, but actually it’s just shorthand (you know, because all this code isn’t shorthand enough already) for “1×2/2×1” which means that both partners switch giving and receiving, so to speak.

And, in case you’re wondering, the most common yaoi pairings in Gundam Wing fanfiction are

1×2
3×4
1x2x5
13×6 and
6×5

while the most common het pairings in yaoi are

5xS and
6×9

And yes, I could go on and on, but I think that should be for another time. At least now you can decipher the numbering in the headings of GW fanfics. Go you.

Viannah E. Duncan

Viannah E. Duncan is a writer and activist hailing originally from Los Angeles. She lives outside of Baltimore, Maryland, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. She has a cat, Cleo.